


Baby's Breath, Roses, & Forget-Me-Nots

by kriegslastbraincell



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Cheating, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love, it's gay you can't change my mind, what if they all lived
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-10-25 21:36:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20731136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriegslastbraincell/pseuds/kriegslastbraincell
Summary: What if Stanely hadn't taken a bath and Eddie hadn't been impaled? What if they all lived, stricken with childhood hopes and regrets?This is the story that didn't end. This is the story where, in the death of fear, the Losers are left to clean up a mess they hadn't acknowledged.[Trigger Warning for attempted suicide and mental health struggles]





	1. The End, The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I know this has been done before. But I didn't like the ending, and I'm self-indulgently rewriting my own.

**Baby's Breath: ** _ everlasting love, pureness, innocence _

**(Red) Roses: ** _ the lover's rose, enduring passion _

**Forget-Me-Nots: ** _ true love _

**▴▴▴**

**Chapter One**

**Part I - Richie**

Richie stands on the kissing bridge by himself. His hands are buried deep in the pockets of his jeans, where his fingers idly spin the knife taking up real estate there. There’s definitely a splinter in his thumb. 

The clown’s voice echoes through his head. _ I know your secret, your _ dirty _ little secret _ , It bellows. Richie thinks about the way It had said the word _ dirty _. It’d been spoken to him the same way he’d heard all his life. Adults, mostly other men, calling a very large and very hidden part of himself dirty, disgusting. Like the epidemic sweeping a community, one that he couldn’t even begin to consider himself a part of, just simply thinking about the tender feelings harbored in his chest seemed to spark the need to kiss a woman on the mouth and pray while doing so; save he find himself infected too. 

Not that Richie considered himself particularly pious, (more realistically: at _ all _ pious,) but he’d heard it was possible to just...pray it away. Let the Will of God take it from him, sweet Jesus, and let him feel clean again. 

And despite this, Richie believed that no amount of baptismal rinsing in the quarry could wipe the patina from his soul. Especially not with the obvious amount of ogling he’d done. It was so bad, in fact, that Stanley had run his arm along the water’s edge and given Richie a faceful to bring him back into reality. Eddie’s dripping hair and eyelashes, both thick and heavy with water he complained would probably kill him, was almost too much for Richie; despite his missing glasses making shapes a little obscure. 

Richie can’t help but let his bleary, puffy eyes linger fondly on the two initials he’d spent the better part of twenty minutes carving into the old wood. It gives him a moment of peace amidst the chaos that roils somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. 

Footsteps echo from behind him. A hand comes to rest, gently, on Richie’s shoulder. 

“Mike,” Richie manages a smile and cooly wipes at his eyes. “Hey, uh, how’s it going? Everybody vacate now that that fucking clown got owned?”

Mike laughs. It’s a kind and welcoming sound. “Yeah, Rich. Last one out is you.”

“You’re not surprised are you? You do know what they say about nice guys, right?”

Mike playfully punches Richie’s arm, then claps a hand on his shoulder. His tired face and sympathetic eyes are taking tidy stock of Richie’s own weary state. “What, that they stay behind and wallow just for the fun of it?”

“Fun? Who said any of this shit was fun? Nah, nah, nah. We all came here to kill a fucking clown because Bill tried to give us all juvenile Hepatitis and you stayed behind to study up on some freaky deaky shit. No, none of this was fun. I just got a late flight, as all.”

Mike looks at a watch Richie hadn’t noticed he was wearing. “Well, according to the itinerary that you left in my car, your flight leaves in an hour.” 

Richie’s eyes widen. “Oh _ shit _, I’m going to get stuck in Derry-fucking-Maine with the Lucha Librarian.” 

“Yeah well,” Mike laughs. “I didn’t come down here just to shoot the shit with you, Mr. Nice Guy. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.” 

The drive to the airport was a quiet one. Mike liked to listen to jazz with no words, which strapped Richie’s psyche with cement bricks that sunk him to the bottom of a trench of pensive thoughts. Eddie’s face flashed through his mind. His spectral lips mouthed, “fuck you.” 

“-and I think that’s where I’m going to go. What about you, Rich? Rich? Hey, Richie?”

He blinked, looking at his childhood friend. Man, were there always that many lines in Mike’s face? 

_ Jesus, we’re all fucking old. _“I’m here, Mikey. What’s up?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I’m going to have to go out on a real far limb and say, uh, no. I was not listening at all.” 

Mike chuckled. “Typical you, Rich. I asked what your plans are now that this is all over?”

Richie looked out the window and watched the trees pass by in a blur. He made eye contact with a woman in a Prius that could have been his mother fifty years ago. He frowned. 

“Eh, probably what I was doing before.” 

“Which was-?”

“My best, Mikey. My goddamn best.” 

**Part II - Bill**

Audra had said that she couldn’t wait to see him. He should have been able to echo the sentiment with vim and vigor. But he simply sighed into the phone, stepped out of the cab, and told his wife, “I love you, I have to go,” and hung up. The guilt he felt blossomed into a headache that hammered the back of his skull as he checked his bags. 

Bill Denbrough flew first class, sitting with his laptop open, not writing. His thoughts were slow, idle things that did not inspire creativity or passion. They put a weighty pressure on his heart instead, pulling it down, down into the pit of his growling stomach. 

Though his phone was presently out of service, Bill still let the dim screen throw a bleary illumination across his face. He was staring blankly at a picture taken less than 24 hours ago ousting Aurda as his phone wallpaper. The screen shows his heavy eyes an intimate moment shared by the Losers Club, gathered around a table almost too full of shared plates, smiling in a way that seemed long overdue but short-lived. 

Each smiling face, including his own, was given a passing glance. Mike, Richie, Bev, Eddie, himself, Ben, and…

…Stanley. His hair dark and wild, eyes bright in the dim light of the restaurant, and a smile that stretched up the sides of his cheeks to light up every inch of his soft face. Bill tenderly ran his thumb alongside of the phone, letting a waterfall of emotion cascade over him. 

“Mr. Denbrough?” 

Bill startled. He sat up, darkening the screen of his phone. Clearing his throat, Bill smiles. “Yes?”

“Do you have any interest in some cucumber-infused water?” Asks a petite stewardess, pushing a cart that looked as though it might roll backward over her. “Or sparkling wine?” 

“Just w-w-water, please.” Bill sets his jaw. All those years of speech therapy meant nothing the moment he set foot back in Derry. He hoped maybe when the plane touched down in California that it would just fade away as though it had never returned. Unlikely, but he could certainly hope.

The stewardess sets a glass of water next to Bill’s laptop. She asks, “Are you writing something new?” 

Bill chuckles tonelessly. “I’m t-t-trying to.”

“Mm, well, write the ending first. That usually helps it turn out better.” She pushes the cart along the aisle, giving him a sideways look. A sigh escapes Bill’s lips and follows behind the stewardess as she attends the other passengers. He thinks that one day, maybe, he’ll write an ending worth reading. 

At dinner Stanley, of course, had said it to him best, “the beginning is the start of the ending, Bill. You have to make sure that the ending correlates, otherwise, it makes the beginning worth next to nothing, no matter how good it is.” 

Bill leans back against the seat and sips his water. He stares out over the cloudless night, watching the stars poke holes in the boundless ebony of the night sky. The steady beating of the lights on the plane’s wingtips mimics the rhythm of Bill’s wanting heart. 

_ How selfish _ , he thinks. _ For the heart to want when it is already full. _

Still, how could his heart possibly be full if it tried to reach through the sealed plane, fall 30,000 feet, and land safely in the soft, unworked hands of his childhood best friend?

His _ married _ childhood friend. The same friend who had his own life, his own wife, his own separate existence that had not aligned with Bill’s in a normal way for twenty-seven long years. 

And the truth was that despite the details of the Losers’ shared childhood- details which were both large and small -that had been absent from his mind, the deep-seated emotions stayed so poignantly present that he often laid awake while Aurda slept peacefully beside him. In the solitude of two a.m., Bill caught himself thinking of someone he hadn’t spoken to since Derry had become a distant memory. 

An image of Stanley, young and endowed with an anti-spider shower cap, popped up in Bill’s newly closed eyes. 

“_ Do you think we’ll still be friends when we grow up _?” He’d asked, in earnest. 

_ “Of course,” _they’d all answered like it was simple and unspoken, and Stan’s curiosity had disturbed a very delicate peace. They all agreed that nothing would separate them, and even if it did, they’d never be hard for one another to find. 

But life rarely follows the path you think and hope it will. Oath or no, leaving Maine had sewn a strange sort of uncoupling within their group that, thankfully, was easily mended the moment they’d reveled in each other’s company. 

If it were possible to collapse while sitting, Bill would have done just that into the seat. Behind his eyelids he saw Stanley again, this time as an adult, smiling at him. His heart falls out of sync with the wingtip lights and his stomach falls into turbulence. 

He has a long way to go before touchdown and prayed silently for his wayward heart to fall back in love with Aurda when the wheels kiss the tarmac. 

**Part III - Eddie**

“Yes, Myra, sweetheart I _ know _ that I need to pick up a new inhaler. What? No. Myra! Jesus, no I wouldn’t do that. Honey, look I… Myra, please… Sweetheart if you _ just _let me…” 

Eddie gestures impatiently at the cab driver. The older man looks thoroughly unamused and all but throws the heavy suitcases at his frazzled passenger. Eddie tips him a hundred dollar bill and sandwiches his cell phone between his ear and shoulder while fumbling the suitcases up the three steps to his front door. 

“Myra? Myra, honey, I am _ outside _, I will be inside in just a moment. Please let me-” 

Before he can finish his statement, the front door bursts open and out of their house bustles Eddie’s boisterous wife. She’s still got the phone in her hand, and she’s dressed in a jumpsuit that makes her look like a bottle of orange juice just past its prime. Eddie sighs through his nose and musters up an enthusiastic look. 

Myra throws her arms around Eddie’s small form and kisses his face multiple times with her wet lips. She’s babbling about how sick Eddie could have gotten, how dangerous planes are, how those ungrateful so-called friends of his could have gotten him sick, injured, or worse. 

Eddie tries to temper his wife’s incessant worrying. “Myra, sweetheart, I am _ fine _. Not sick, not hurt, just tired. Why don’t we just go inside, I can shower, and you can make dinner, okay?”

“Oh. Eddie Bear, you nearly read my mind. I’ll make us some special soup! Go, go, go. Shower time for my handsome man.” 

Eddie hauls the suitcases into the house, exhausted already. 

While Myra busies herself in the kitchen, Eddie drags himself and his suitcases upstairs. He unpacks with a noncommittal obligation to the neatness of his house. He strips down afterward, grabs his phone, and heads into the bathroom. 

Sitting on the toilet behind a locked door, Eddie tries to block out Myra’s nasal calling to him from downstairs. Right now, he doesn’t care what colour carrots are going into the soup. He doesn’t generally care on a normal evening, but tonight, he cares even less. 

He’s cradling his phone and staring at an unsent text to “Trashmouth Tozier.” 

Being in Derry had dug up memories and feelings he’d tried, so hard and for so long, to conceal. He was married now for Christ's sake and there was absolutely no reason for this; these feelings. Not now. 

Tears began to well in his eyes as the message he’d typed out hours ago on the drive home to New York remained unsent, taunting him. This text, typing it and sending it, was the one risk he couldn’t analyze. The outcome was hazy, unsure. It bothered him, all of this unknowing business. 

Myra’s voice was still carrying on, crawling upstairs and slipping underneath the bathroom door to prod at Eddie. He can barely hear her as the rushing of emotion in his ears drowns her out to near deafness.

Eddie eventually finds himself within the warm embrace of a hot shower, letting tears run down his face. Behind a dark, locked screen, the unsent text is dead on arrival. 

_ I love you _never finds its way into Richie’s inbox. 

**Part IV - Stanley**

Patricia is sleeping next to him when Stanley wakes from a nightmare. He’s sticky with sweat that adheres the sheets to his skin. The night wells up and fills the bedroom. Patty snores softly. 

Stanley gingerly pulls himself out of bed. He slips out of the bedroom as quietly as possible, leaving his wife to her peaceful dreams. She often complained to him of dreams so luxurious that waking up was the only thing “saving her from the sins of indulgence.” 

That always made Stanley laugh. It brought out a simple kind of laugh that played off of trauma he hadn’t quite come to terms with yet. Eventually, he’d hoped that something would come to pass and he could simply let go of whatever it was his psyche was desperately clinging to. Of course, he knew it didn’t work like that, but he certainly hoped a special exception would be made for him. 

After all, not every person faces a killer clown as a child and adult, then lives to not tell the tale.

Seating himself on the living room couch, Stanley picks up a lone puzzle piece and turns it over in his hand. He smiles wistfully and presses it into its rightful place within the unfinished picture left undisturbed on the glass coffee table. In the low light, his wedding ring flashes menacingly at him. 

He thinks of his wife- sweet, soft-spoken, and trying to be spontaneous -sleeping in the other room. He thinks of his married friends, the way their rings had looked on their hands. He thinks about a certain set of slender fingers, not too unlike his own, also decorated with the binding token of marriage. 

It made him proud, but so, so sad. 

In spite of this, Stanley smiles wistfully. He diligently assigns pieces of the puzzle to their correct spots while his mind travels down vacant roads long since left abandoned. His ring glints. His throat tightens. 

Stanley looks at the clock. It’s three a.m.

_ Too late for a bath _ , he thinks. _ Guess this will have to do for relaxation _. 

Stanley finishes his puzzle before falling asleep on the couch. Around the haloed edges of his dream, a childhood voice echoes through his barely conscious thoughts. 

_ “Promise, Stanley?” _

In the early morning, draped across his couch, Stanley’s mouth bends around the word, “promise.” 


	2. Always Something There To Remind Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise Bill and Stanley are next.

**Chapter Two**

**Part I - Eddie**

Eddie had just finished reviewing his fourth business contract when he realises, with disdain, that Richie was right.

His job was, without a doubt in his mind,  _ definitely  _ created before fun. He’d been staring at the computer screen for the better part of four hours, reading through fine print that felt like a corset being drawn across his pupils the longer he stared at it. The picture of Myra gawking at him, immortalized behind an old fashioned frame that’d been given to him for last year’s birthday, was not helping either.

He’d been back in New York for a month now, and was desperately trying to settle into some kind of routine again. Wake up, shower, go to work, call Myra on lunch, drive home, have dinner, take another shower, go to bed. Day in and day out. Over and over again until he was withered and unable to breathe. 

Not to mention, he’d been trying (and failing) to forget what had happened in Derry. Unlike last time, distance had no effect on memory. He still had every sepia image burned into his psyche. All these images that drifted through his daydreams and nightmares alike, the people he missed, the fear that sunk in until it inhabited the tiny spaces in his marrow and sinew, it all felt like yesterday's affairs. 

Eddie sighs and spares a glance at the clock. It’s barely four. 

“I’m taking a break,” he announces to the other four men in his workspace. He’s up and out before any of them have a chance to ask if they can come too. 

Outside, Eddie is sitting on a bench made of some of the world’s most uncomfortable material. A wayward thought of all the dirty human acts that could have occured on this bench passes through his head, but he shoos the worry away and pulls out his phone instead. 

There’s eight missed calls from Myra. Eddie isn’t going to return a single one of them. 

Instead, he calls Mike. 

Mike’s voice is cheerful and kind. He sounds happy, even over the crackling phone line. “Eddie! Hey, man, how are you? Settling back in to normal life okay?”

“Normal is subjective,” Eddie says. “How are things in Derry?” 

“Oh, I left. Yeah, man, about a week ago. Broke out of my cell and went down south. Florida is as beautiful as I imagined when I was a kid. I’m actually on a white sand beach right now. How crazy is that?” Mike laughs freely. Unbothered. “How about you? How’s New York?” 

Eddie looks behind him. Some of his office mates are grouped together beneath the once elegant but now vaguely green overhang that greets him every morning at eight a.m. They’re all smoking cigarettes. The thought makes him cough. 

“It’s, uh, it’s the usual. Dirty, noisy. Full of assholes that don’t know how to fucking drive.” 

Mike laughs. “How do you of all people survive in the big city, Eds?” 

It hurts to hear that. Memories surge through him, causing a small pocket of emotion to burst in his chest. His sternum aches as though breath was being stolen from his lungs, yet he could breathe just fine. No hitches or wheezing, no desperate coughing and reaching for his inhaler. Just an abstruse ache, decades old, that had no business taking up real estate in his body still. 

A whisper of a touch ghosts across his cheek. And then, in the back of his mind, a voice echoes, “ _ It’s our secret, Eds. _ ” 

Eddie gasps. Blinks. In his ear, Mike is urgently asking, “Eddie? Hey, you okay? Are you there?” 

“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah Mikey. I’m here. I’m, uh, I’m okay.”

Silence falls over the line. From Mike’s end, Eddie can hear the white noise of crashing waves and crying seagulls. He’s envious for a moment, thinking about the kind of peace Mike must be washed with nowadays. Free of the ache of missed opportunity, free of the chains tethering him to the past. 

“-need something, by the way?” 

“Huh? Yeah, oh right. Yeah, hey, do you still have Richie’s number?” 

“Sure, man. You want it? I can text it to you.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, watching his cohorts disappear back into the building. His productivity is definitely going to suffer but whatever. Fuck it. “That’d be great.”

Mike pauses for a moment and then says, “Alright, number’s sent. I thought you two swapped contact info before we all left Derry?”

“I, uh,” Eddie worries his lower lip until it’s raw. “I lost it.”

Two hours after he’d said goodbye to Mike, Eddie had finished up his workday and was leaning against his car. He was staring at Richie’s number. The same number he deleted from his contacts three weeks ago in a vain hope that it wouldn’t matter that much. 

But it did. It mattered more than he would dare put words behind. 

His hand is shaking as it hovers over the little green button. His breath comes in short wheezes. The edges of his vision start to turn black.

Eddie puts his phone away and pulls out his inhaler instead.

He slips into his car, fires it up, and drives home. 

When Eddie gets home, Myra is sitting in her favourite chair and watching reruns of  _ Wheel of Fortune  _ that take up evening airtime. His hands are still shaking when he unlocks his front door. 

The inside of his home is ripe with the pungent odor of roast meat, cruciferous vegetables, and those expensive candles Myra likes. Eddie swallows the urge to gag. He doesn’t need this fight again. Not today. 

“Eddie! Hello,  _ sweetheart _ ,” Myra stands and crosses her thick arms over her chest. She looks at Eddie as though he’d gone out of his way to offend her. “You didn’t call me on your lunch break today.” 

“Myra, I know, I just-” 

“You know that I cannot stand it when you use your excuses, Edward.” 

Eddie shudders and worries his lip again. His stomach drops when Myra approaches him. She cups her palms over his weary shoulders and smooths out invisible lines in his jacket. Her glossy lips form a pucker. 

“I thought you loved me, Eddie! You shouldn’t make me worry about you! You promised when we were married that you would always answer when I called. I can’t be home, worrying about you and whether or not you’re safe.” 

“Myra,  _ please _ . I have had a very long day, I want to shower and-” 

Myra’s hands ball up the expensive jacket, rumpling the material. “Tell me you love me, Eddie. And that you’re sorry. Say it.”

Eddie swallows as his eyes meet that of his wife. She stands a few inches above him, looking down the bridge of her nose at him. Her breath is laced with the tang of wine. 

“I’m...sorry, Myra. Okay?” 

“Say. You. Love. Me.” 

“And I love you.” 

“Excuse me? Was there feeling in that ‘I love you?’”

“I  _ adore  _ you, Myra. Now I am going to shower, dear. I will see you for dinner. Fifteen minutes.” 

Eddie manages to wriggle from his wife’s grip. He slips into the bedroom while Myra follows on his heels. She is shouting nonsense about feeling unloved, that Eddie has been so off, that he should probably see the doctor, that she can take him there. Eddie’s lungs rattle as he hurriedly strips. 

Before Myra can further intrude, Eddie slips into the bathroom and carefully turns the lock. He yells that he needs privacy and they can discuss over dinner. That won’t stop his wife’s needling, but it will placate her enough that he can shower uninterrupted. 

Eddie runs the shower. Letting the din echo through the large bathroom, it offers a blessed silencing power to the nagging voice just beyond the veil of the door. 

Stepping into the temperate embrace, Eddie lets his anxiety, his fear, and his irritation melt away. His eyes are heavy and half-lidded, and his mind is rambling. 

He leans against the cool tile wall and gives in to his thoughts. Bonds loosen, allowing memories to flood behind his eyelids. 

In that moment, Eddie is back in Derry. 

The old bed creaks when he wakes up. He’s been here for 24 hours now, and the memories that fill his skull are eating him alive. The aged ceiling looks like it could come down at any moment and feels like a thousand eyes staring through him. The old television set is quietly playing  _ Golden Girls  _ and projecting a shadowy hue across the small room. His bed is cold. 

Eddie sits up and rubs his eyes while Dorothy scolds Rose. He feels like he might be the only person alive in the state of Maine. 

His eyes don’t adjust well to the darkness. Finer details are sheathed by Derry’s patent brand of gloom. It makes the hotel room seem lonelier somehow. 

Leaning against the headboard, Eddie drags his palm over his forehead and wipes the sweat clinging there. He lets his gaze go soft on the television screen, listening lazily to the subtle sounds around him. The choked whirring of the ceiling fan, the groans of the townhouse settling, Ben’s characteristic snoring in the room beside his. The benign nature of those sounds makes his situation seem almost normal in that moment. Almost like he hadn’t just walked himself back into the childhood nightmares of a killer clown that followed him into his adulthood. 

Almost. 

That fucking clown. The kid-eating, life-ruining, fear-inducing, fuckhole clown. 

If it wasn’t the memories of his childhood that would send him spiraling into a depthless pit of anguish, then it would definitely be unresolved bullshit that he’d buried in the dirt before leaving for the city shortly after graduation. 

Eddie sighs into the midnight of his room and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes until little fireworks spark across his skewed vision. 

And then, from outside his room, footsteps. 

Quiet at first, distant. Approaching from somewhere down the hallway. 

Eddie pulls his hands from his eyes and blinks away the cloudiness. His breath hitches.  _ Did I imagine that _ , he wonders.  _ I must have _ . 

Then, again, the footsteps echo. Slightly louder now. Closer to his room. 

Eddie freezes.  _ Okay _ , he thinks.  _ I definitely didn’t imagine that _ . 

The footsteps stop, stagger, and then keep going. As though the footfalls were interrupted by a misstep. 

Closer, closer. Every thumping step that pads down the hallway. Eddie’s lungs constrict. He doesn’t even think to grab his inhaler. The icy claws of fear dig into him. 

Thump, thump. Past Bill’s room, past Bev’s room, past Ben’s room…

...Stopping in front of his. 

Eddie puts a hand over his mouth and bites into his palm. He needs his inhaler. He doesn’t dare reach for it. 

Instead, he strains his ears, trying desperately to hear anything that would tell him who or what was outside his door. 

The silence drags on for what seems like an eternity. And then, without warning, a familiar voices goes, “oh fuck this, this is so stupid, I need to go back to bed, what am I thinking.” 

Eddie exhales, grabs his inhaler from the nightstand, and frees his lungs from the vice grip of asthma. He throws the blankets aside, stands and crosses his room. Flinging to door open, Eddie pokes his head out, watching Richie’s broad form slink down the hallway like a scolded animal. 

“Rich!” 

Richie stiffens and turns on his heel. His eyes are wide. 

“What!” He whispers, mouth forming an ‘o.’ 

“Come here, you dickwad!” 

“I, uh, no, man. I’m just gonna go back to my room. Oh, um, I didn’t wake you right?” 

Eddie pushes himself out of the room a little more. “Yes, you did! Now come here, asshole! I’m not whispering shouting to you from all the way down the hallway.” 

Richie walks his way back to Eddie’s room, and is promptly ushered inside. He finds respite in the armchair pushed against the corner of the room. His eyes are tired when they look up at Eddie. 

“Hey, so,” he begins, rubbing at the back of his neck. “What’s up, buddy?” 

“You tell me!” Eddie says, slapping his childhood friend on the shoulder. “What the fuck were you doing creeping around the hallway like a weirdo?!” 

“You know, I, uh, couldn’t sleep so I came to see if you were awake. We haven’t had a chance to catch up since we got here and I thought it’d be nice to do that but fuck me I guess.” 

Eddie punches Richie on the shoulder this time, and stands above him with his thin arms folded tightly over his chest. “What the hell is your problem, Rich? You’ve been fucking weird since we got here.” 

“It’s nothing,” Richie says. Eddie can’t help but notice that Richie hasn’t changed out of his day clothes. He’s still outfitted with his jacket, which his hands are buried deep in the pockets of. “I just remembered that growing up here sucked balls. I just wanted to commiserate or corroborate or something.”

Eddie almost laughs, but the air rushing through his nose escapes in an unflattering way. 

“Really, that’s why you’re being a fucking weirdo? Because you’re mad about your childhood?” 

“No, that’s not the whole reason,” Richie says. He looks at his feet. 

“Then what’s up, Rich?” 

Richie takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. “I can’t.” 

Eddie’s brow furrows. He kneels between Richie’s legs and puts a hand on his knee. “Hey, what the hell, dude? You were fine two seconds ago. What’s going on?”

Air hisses through Richie’s clenched teeth when he draws breath. When he looks up at Eddie, his eyes and cheeks are flush with stifled emotion. He doesn’t say anything, but behind his gaze is a thousand unspoken words in a million different languages neither man can decipher. The air between them grows heavy. 

Eddie doesn’t know when gravity begins to pull him forward instead of down. 

Richie’s shoulders bow as he leans in sync with Eddie, a shaking hand cupping the smaller man’s soft cheek. 

Their lips meet in the middle. 

Eddie’s hand bunches the rough fabric of Richie’s jeans against his palm. Richie’s hand tugs Eddie closer. 

They’re exactly where they left off, all those years ago. 

Against his lips, Richie murmurs, “ _ it’s our secret, Eds _ .” 

Eddie nods and pulls Richie in, kissing him deeper. His fingers tangle in dark, unruly hair. His heart hammers in his chest, and his body washes with a familiar sense of completeness that’d been absent for two decades. 

In this moment, the wedding ring wrapped around his finger meant next to nothing. He wished, behind closed eyes and a closeted heart, that an identical band belonged to the other man on the opposite side of his mouth. 

In a rush, all Eddie could remember was that he had never stopped loving Richie. 

He remembered the taste of Shasta on Richie’s mouth, the roughness of his lips chapped by the summer sun. The warmth of their lanky bodies tangled in the hammock, alone in the Clubhouse after the rest of the Losers had gone home. The beat of his heart, the pit of his stomach full of butterflies and chaotic, conflicting emotions. He remembered the puzzle pieces of their fingers, fitting together so perfectly. A little slice of life all their own. 

And then, Myra yells through the fog of his memory that it’s been fifteen minutes. 

Eddie’s eyes snap open, and he blinks in shock as tears dribble down his cheeks. 

_ I can’t do this _ , Eddie thinks. Myra’s banging on the door.  _ I can’t do this... _

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Part II - Richie**

Richie is sitting in his Mustang, parked in the unlit lot of an abandoned mini mart, listening to Tears for Fears, and crying. 

His agent has been blowing up his phone. Richie’d been ignoring it. Tomorrow, when he stuffed his emotional bullshit back into the uncorked bottle of his soul and aged it in the basement of his mind, he’d call back. 

Tonight though, he didn’t care about work. He didn’t care about making people laugh so he could feel something in the hollow space of his chest. He didn’t care about the women who wanted him to sign their tits and kiss them on the mouth. He didn’t care about anything except…

... _ No _ , Richie thought.  _ I can’t. _

He knew, in his heart of hearts, that there was no point in chasing a fantasy. He’d been doing that for, how long now? He couldn’t even remember. 

And he knew that the longer he chased the white rabbit down the hole, leading him to the yellow brick road of memory lane, the longer he’d end up doing shit like this. Which, in hindsight, he thought wasn't a very good look on him. Like its clown counterpart- or in Richie's mind, clownterpart -"Tragic Comedian" definitely didn't quite have the same appeal.

It was a form of self-punishment for forty some-odd years of doing nothing but existing with non-typical romantic and sexual preferences. He didn’t quite consider himself deviant or deluded, just a lot lost and a little confused with a severe case of lovesickness for his childhood best friend. 

He’d heard, over the years, that you never forget your first love. Richie had no idea it’d be like this. 

Richie lets the song play out. George Michael’s Wham! takes over with a bright, jittery tune that seems inappropriately appropriate. Richie can’t help but laugh in spite of himself, tapping along to the beat on the steering wheel. 

“You know, George,” he says to the radio. “You were lucky.” 

Richie smiles and skips the song. 

He’s listening to the intro riff of “Just What I Needed” when his phone rings through the car’s stereo. The number that pops up immediately pushes bile into his throat.

Richie answers anyway. 

“Tozier.”

There’s a pause and a quiet sigh. Then, “hey, it’s Eddie,” echoes through his car. 

“Eddie?”  _ Oh fuck.  _ Richie tries to steady his voice. They haven’t spoken since Derry. “H-hey, man. Shit, hi, what’s uh, what’s up?” 

“I just wanted to see how you were doing. You’re still doing your shitty comedy shows, right?” 

Richie thinks guiltily about the multiple missed calls from his agent. “Yeah, dude. I can’t just take a boring ass job like yours to live fast and die hard.”

“I fucking hate you,” Eddie says, though laughs. It’s lacking a little. “I, uh, wanted to see if you were going to be around New York anytime.”

Richie swallows. “Oh, um, yeah. I don’t know my schedule. Can you give me like twenty minutes and I can get back to you?” 

There’s another pause. “Yeah, I can do that. Call me back.” 

Eddie hangs up, and Richie finds himself calling his agent back sooner than he’d imagined. 

“Hey, bro, do me a huge fucking favor. Book me a couple of shows in NYC.”

“I thought you didn’t want to ever perform there, Rich?” 

“Yeah, well, I changed my fucking mind, okay? Just get me dates and times. Tonight.” 

His agent sighs and says, “you are so lucky I am the best agent in the world” and hangs up. 

A bit of time passes by, Richie listens to a few Yes songs, and his agent calls back. He’s got two dates and times for New York, coming up next month. According to his agent, a few “providential” openings were now filled with Richie Tozier’s Netflix comedy special  _ Trashmouth _ . 

“They’ll love you there,” his agent says. 

“Yep, you’re great. Thanks for doing your job.” 

Richie hangs up, and a split second later, has Eddie on the line. He can’t help but find this game of phone tag a little bit amusing.

He passes over the dates and times, then pointedly asks, “why? You wanna come? I thought you hated my shit because I don’t write it.” 

“I’m bringing tomatoes,” Eddie says. “Oh, hey. I gotta go, Rich. See you later.” 

Eddie cuts the line before Richie has a chance to ask him to wait. His car is once again filled with the sound of the mixtape he liked to cry to. 

And Richie, alone in his car, does just that. 


End file.
